1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus and an information processing method, and particularly to print scheduling in a printing system capable of executing a single print job in a manner distributed to a plurality of printing apparatuses.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, commercial printing is known in which a printed matter is fabricated on request by customers such as private users and companies. In such a commercial printing industry, the printed matter is fabricated on the basis of printing data (an original) and the specification of printing style, number of copies, delivery due date, and the like provided by a customer. Then, the printed matter is delivered to the customer. In such a printing industry, printing is usually performed using large scale printing apparatuses such as traditionally known offset reproduction printing presses.
In recent years, with improvements in a printing speed and image quality of electro-photography printers and ink jet printers, the printed matter obtained by means of theses printers, which is equivalent to a printed matter obtained by means of the offset reproduction printing press, has been outputted in a short time and then delivered. Specifically, services of simple commercial printing, which excel at printing of small number of copies and a delivery in a short time and are called “copy service,” “printing service,” “Print On Demand (POD) center,” or the like, also exist.
In each of the traditionally-existing printing industry using large scale printing apparatuses and the simple printing industry, a request for printing is made in such a manner that a customer mails to a printing company a manuscript recorded on paper or an electronic medium (such as an FD, an MO, and a CD-ROM) and a printing instruction (order instruction) which specifies the number of print copies of the manuscript, a bookbinding method, a delivery due date, and the like. Alternatively the customer directly brings the manuscript and the printing instruction to the printing company. These mailing and bringing of the manuscript and the like are generally called submission of manuscript. Further, systems have been commercially realized that allow orders of printing to be placed/received on line via the Internet or an intranet. For example, when “DotDoc.Web” provided by Fuji Xerox Co., Ltd. is used, a customer accesses from a computer of the customer's company a homepage provided by a printing company. Then, the customer fills in a printing request form with necessary information such as purchaser information (a reception address and the like), a printing style, and the number of copies, and then transmits the form together with a manuscript file. As such, the order for printing of the manuscript is placed.
In response, the printing company prepares a printing instruction related to the printing requested as described above by the customer, and thereby schedules the print processing. According to the prepared schedule, printing and bookbinding are performed respectively using a printing apparatus such as a printer and a bookbinding machine each connected to a work computer. The fabricated printed matter is delivered to the customer so that the service is completed.
As such, a printing company performs print scheduling so that printed matter of the contents satisfying the request can be delivered by a specified delivery due date. In a large scale printing center using a large number of printing apparatuses, a plurality of operators use a wide variety of printing apparatuses and work computers and thereby process a large number of printing requests (orders) in parallel. Thus, in print scheduling, it is desirable that resources such as personnel (operators) and apparatuses are used as efficiently as possible.
Conventionally, a management of printing schedules is generally performed using a scheduler. That is, information such as the status of registered print jobs and use of printing devices (printing apparatus) is managed. When a new print job is to be registered, the information is referred to so that the new job is arranged such as to be executed efficiently with respect to time.
As an example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2002-063004 discloses a print control apparatus comprising a plurality of output printing devices and a UI for displaying the jobs scheduled in each printing device.
Specifically, on the UI, the time arrangement of registered print jobs is first referred to for each printing device to be used for the print jobs. Then, an operator identifies printing devices that satisfy the style setting and the printing conditions specified in a print job to be set up newly, that is, printing devices that are available for the new print job. Then, the operator compares the throughput of each identified printing device with the printing amount of the print job to be set up newly. The operator, on the basis of this comparison, assigns the new print job at an idle time of a single printing device or distributes the print job at idle times of a plurality of printing devices. Obviously, in this assigning and distributing, the time arrangement of the new print job is ensured not to be later than the delivery due date.
However, the prior art printing schedule management disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2002-063004 described above has a problem that the process of arranging a print job for a plurality of devices is complicated. For example, the operator compares the throughput of each printing device available for a print job with the printing amount of the print job. At the same time, the operator needs to perform the process of checking the idle time of each device while considering the printing amount, the delivery due date, and the like described above, so as to determine the schedule of the print job. Thus, the print job setting requires a large amount of personal determination such as that various setting conditions like throughputs and idle times are checked and that these conditions are coordinated. Further, when a print job is determined to be performed in a manner distributed to a plurality of printing devices, further determination is necessary such as the printing amount to be allocated to each device. This complicates the process further.
Further, in the prior art scheduler as described above, when a printing device becomes unavailable owing to a fault or the like having occurred before the execution of a print job or during the printing, re-scheduling is necessary in such a manner that the unavailable device is not incorporated. In such a case, the operator needs to repeat the complicated job setting process described above. Further, repeated re-scheduling of work is also complicated that is necessary when the printing device becomes available in mid-flow.